Scientific American magazine announced Monday that it would stop using the term "climate change" in articles about man-made global warming and substitute "climate emergency" instead. "Journalism should reflect what science says: the climate emergency is here," Scientific American senior editor Mark Fischetti said in a Monday post about the magazine's decision. To make his point, Fischetti pointed to the mounting number of weather-related disasters that most scientists agree stem from climate change.
Japan's government has approved a plan to release over one million tonnes of treated water from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said on Tuesday. Japan's government argues that the release will be safe because the water has been processed to remove almost all radioactive elements and will be diluted. It has support from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which says the release is similar to processes for disposing of waste water from nuclear plants elsewhere in the world.
Over the weekend, seemingly troubling news emerged from Israel, with a study suggesting that the coronavirus vaccine manufactured by Pfizer and BioNTech was less effective against B.1.351, a variant first encountered in South Africa. Meanwhile, two of the New York Post's most-read stories as of Monday morning were about a 31-year-old woman in New York City who tested positive for the coronavirus three weeks after receiving the vaccine and a 52-year-old man who ended up in the hospital with COVID-19, despite having also been vaccinated. Together, such reports in the mainstream media of “breakthrough” infections of the vaccinated can foster the inaccurate narrative that COVID-19 vaccines are not effective, especially against new strains of the coronavirus, some of which had not yet emerged when those vaccines were being developed.
An Asian man was arrested after California police say he kidnapped and tried to sexually assault an Asian woman, believing she was white, in retaliation for the rise in hate crimes against Asians. Michael Sangbong Rhee, 37, was arrested Thursday night at his Lake Forest home, Irvine police said in a Facebook post. Rhee was charged with kidnapping with intent to commit a sexual assault and is being held at Orange County Jail on $1 million bail.
The Philippine government summoned the Chinese ambassador to press its demand for Chinese vessels to immediately leave a reef claimed by Manila in the South China Sea and said their presence was stoking tensions, officials said Tuesday. The escalating feud between Manila and Beijing started after more than 200 Chinese vessels suspected by Philippine authorities to be operated by militias were spotted early last month at Whitsun Reef. The Philippine government demanded the vessels leave then deployed coast guard and patrol vessels to the area but China said it owns the reef and the Chinese vessels were sheltering from rough seas.
While nothing is definitive, "all indications are pointing to the fact" that Israel was behind a cyberattack that knocked out power at Iran's Natanz uranium enrichment facility over the weekend, retired U.S. Navy Adm. William McRaven said Monday, and he finds the allegations "a little disturbing" given that the U.S. and other countries are currently trying to renegotiate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. "Frankly, I'm not exactly sure what it accomplishes," McRaven told CNN's Jake Tapper. "It's a little bit of a shot across the bow, but Natanz will only be down for maybe a week or so."
Russia on Tuesday warned the United States to ensure its warships stayed well away from Crimea "for their own good", calling their deployment in the Black Sea a provocation designed to test Russian nerves. Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and two U.S. warships are due to arrive in the Black Sea this week amid an escalation in fighting in eastern Ukraine where government forces have battled Russian-backed troops in a conflict Kyiv says has killed 14,000 people. The deployment comes as the West sounds the alarm over what it says is a big and unexplained build-up of Russian forces close to Ukraine's eastern border and in Crimea.
The ousted Myanmar ambassador to the UK has been ordered by the country's military junta to leave his London residence or face prosecution by the new regime. In a hand-delivered letter, Kyaw Zwar Minn, who was last week forced out of the Myanmar embassy at the orders of the regime, has now been told to quit the Hampstead house where he has lived with his family since his appointment in 2013. In a move designed to strengthen the hand of officials loyal to the military government which ousted Myanmar's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Kyaw Zwar Minn has been given until Thursday to leave.
These fantastical homes range from a 64,000-acre Texas ranch to an oceanside estate in the south of France Originally Appeared on Architectural Digest
Two days after he married his partner of many years, Anselm Bilgri, a former monk and prior at one of Germany's most famous monasteries, learned that the Vatican would not bless relationships like his.
Dr Seuss books have made headlines lately, but not for this reason. According to a police report from the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, deputies went to a Largo home on a call of suspected child abuse. When they arrived around 9 p.m.
One of the worst droughts in memory in a massive agricultural region straddling the California-Oregon border could mean steep cuts to irrigation water for hundreds of farmers this summer to sustain endangered fish species critical to local tribes. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees water allocations in the federally owned Klamath Project, is expected to announce this week how the season's water will be divvied up after delaying the decision a month. For the first time in 20 years, it's possible that the 1,400 irrigators who have farmed for generations on 225,000 acres (91,000 hectares) of reclaimed farmland will get no water at all — or so little that farming wouldn't be worth it.
NEW DELHI (Reuters) -India is to fast-track emergency approvals for COVID-19 vaccines that have been authorised by Western countries and Japan, paving the way for possible imports of Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna shots. The move, which will drop the need for companies to do small, local safety trials for their vaccines before seeking emergency approval, came following the world's biggest surge in cases in the country this month. Vaccines authorised by the World Health Organization or authorities in the United States, Europe, the United Kingdom and Japan "may be granted emergency use approval in India, mandating the requirement of post-approval parallel bridging clinical trial", the health ministry said in a statement.
'My family and I have been victims of an organized criminal extortion involving a former DOJ official,' the embattled Gaetz said in a statement. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz has reportedly been denied a meeting with former President Donald Trump amid a sex trafficking probe that has shrouded his political career. The Republican congressman, a staunch supporter and close friend of Trump, believes the former commander-in-chief should run for office again in 2024.
A former counselor accused of raping one boy and repeatedly groping another at New Hampshire's youth detention center in the 1990s denied the allegations when questioned by police but acknowledged being reprimanded for “wrestling with children,” a prosecutor said Monday. Frank Davis, 79, of Hopkinton, is one of seven former workers at the Youth Development Center in Manchester who were arrested last week and charged with either sexual assault or being accomplices to the abuse of 11 teens from 1994 to 2005. The center, now called the Sununu Youth Services Center, has been the target of a broad criminal investigation since 2019, along with a lawsuit in which more than 200 men and women allege they were physically or sexually abused as children by 150 staffers from 1963 to 2018.
Germany's federal government will ask parliament for temporary powers to enforce a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, after several regions failed to impose agreed curbs to bring a third wave of the pandemic under control, a government source said. With infections rising rapidly in some areas, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government is pressing for a change to the Infection Protection Act to enable Berlin to enforce restrictions under certain scenarios. According to the draft law presented to the cabinet on Tuesday, a mandatory nationwide "emergency brake" will be introduced if the number of new infections per 100,000 residents in a district or city exceeds 100 for three consecutive days within ...
Two demonstrators and a policeman were killed Tuesday in violent clashes between Islamists and police in Pakistan, hours after authorities arrested the head of an Islamist party in the eastern city of Lahore, a senior official and local media reported. The policeman was killed in overnight clashes with the supporters of Saad Rizvi, the head of the Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan who was arrested on Monday, a senior police officer Ghulam Mohammad Dogar said. Ten policemen were also wounded in these clashes in the town of Shahadra near Lahore.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday named Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley as the State Department's first chief diversity officer, a position created to make the U.S. diplomatic corps more representative. The appointment is part of the Biden administration's efforts to put diversity, equity and racial justice at the top of the national agenda after nationwide protests against police brutality and racial bias last year. Introducing Abercrombie-Winstanley, Blinken said the department and the country were at a "moment of reckoning" on racial equality, referring to the Black Lives Matter movement and attacks against Asian-Americans.
Taiwan has said a record number of Chinese military jets flew into its air defence zone on Monday. The defence ministry said 25 aircraft including fighters and nuclear-capable bombers entered its so-called air defence identification zone (ADIZ) on Monday. The incursion is the largest in a year and comes as the US warns against an "increasingly aggressive China".
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Nearly half of all oil pipelines from the Permian basin, the biggest U.S. oilfield, are expected to be empty by the end of the year, analysts and executives said. Pipeline companies went on a construction spree throughout 2018 and 2019 to handle blistering growth in U.S. crude production to a record 13 million barrels per day (bpd). Major pipeline companies are exploring ways to ship other products in those lines and considering selling stakes in operations to raise cash.
Ukraine's leader has asked for a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the Russian troop buildup across his country's border and the escalating tensions in eastern Ukraine, but the request has not been answered so far, his spokeswoman said Monday. The concentration of Russian troops along the frontier comes amid a surge of cease-fire violations in eastern Ukraine, where Russia-baсked separatists and Ukrainian forces have been locked in a conflict since Moscow's 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. More than 14,000 people have died in fighting in eastern Ukraine and efforts to negotiate a political settlement have stalled.
Muslims began marking Ramadan with communal prayers Tuesday in a socially distanced contrast to the empty mosques of a year ago when Islam's holiest month coincided with the start of the coronavirus pandemic. COVID-19 cases are spiking in Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim nation, but vaccines are being administered and the government is loosening restrictions. Mosques were allowed to open for Ramadan prayers with strict health protocols in place, and with malls and cafes open, passers-by could again see curtains shielding the sight of food from people fasting.
There has been another "explosive event" at a volcano on the Caribbean island of St Vincent, with power outages and water supplies cut off. The La Soufrière volcano first erupted on Friday, blanketing the island in a layer of ash and forcing some 16,000 people to evacuate their homes. Scientists warn that eruptions could continue for days - or even weeks.
It is inevitable that some people who have been fully vaccinated against the coronavirus will still get a "breakthrough" infection because no vaccine is 100 percent effective, Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Monday.
A uniformed Black Army officer was held at gunpoint and pepper-sprayed during a traffic stop. Second lieutenant Caron Nazario filed a lawsuit against the 2 Virginia officers involved. In a complaint, Nazario said they gave conflicting orders and he was worried he would be murdered.
“There’s no ‘both sides of the debate’ when it comes to active voter suppression.”
“Companies that do this ooze contempt for their own customers and employees who are not in the leftmost quarter of opinion.”
“The truth is that Fortune 500 companies were never taking moral stances from the goodness of their corporate hearts.”
“The truth is, the companies hold the cards…If companies stick to their guns, Georgia is likely to back down as well.”
“When a company folds to the unfounded outrage of a few misinformed nuts, they are forever at the mob’s beck-and-call.”